GADO Receives Ford Foundation Visionaries Award

According to a press release issued earlier today, the Ford Foundation has named the Kenyan cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa among twelve social innovators that are to receive $100,000 to advance their work. Mwampembwa, better known by his pen name GADO, is one of the two or three most widely syndicated and influential cartoonists on the entire African continent, and I believe he's the biggest voice of that type in his part of Africa by a wide margin. GADO also has a TV series called The XYZ Show, which uses puppets in the tradition of the UK's Spitting Image. That show, which debuted in 2009 after a seven-year gestation period, has brought the cartoonist's skeptical, reformist point of view to millions of people in the region.

The awards are part of the Foundation's 75th anniversary celebration and were given out through their visionaries program. Other winners include the women's advocate Ellen Bravo, Peru's indigenous peoples activist Tarcila Rivera Zea and the education reformer Steve Barr.
 
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